Attacks Mount Against E.A.I.'s Hartford Plans

The Hartford, Conn., school system's relationship with Education
Alternatives Inc. showed strains last week as teachers, principals, and
school board members assailed the private management company's plans
for the district.

The school board agreed to continue working with E.A.I. but insisted
that the company mend its rift with the district superintendent and
redraft its proposed budget for the coming year.

Hundreds of teachers' union members, meanwhile, kept up a drumbeat
of protests against the company's plans to cut jobs and redirect the
savings toward computers, supplies, and other needs identified by local
school-governance teams. Union leaders were joined by some city council
members in demanding that the school board end the public-private
partnership with E.A.I. it entered into last fall. (See Education Week,
10/12/94.)

Superintendent Eddie L. Davis and company officials were working
late last week to piece together a new budget from the remains of their
conflicting spending plans, both of which the board rejected.

The city council complicated their task--and further shook up the
local political scene--by deciding to allocate nearly $5 million less
to the district than the school board had expected for the coming
fiscal year.

While E.A.I.'s supporters on the board remained confident that the
company would find the money to bring about hoped-for reforms, they
expressed impatience with the Minneapolis-based company's perceived
missteps and voiced weariness with the employee protests that have
disrupted recent board meetings.

"Right now, there is a collective frustration on the part of those
who have supported the initiative from the start," said G. Stewart
Murchie, an aide to Mayor Michael P. Peters. The mayor has tried to
intervene in support of E.A.I. during the current strife.

Frances Sanchez, a teacher who serves on the city council, offered
to try to tack $5 million on to the city's appropriation to the
district if it terminated its contract with the for-profit company. The
school board voted 6 to 3 last week not to consider such a step.

"We are in this contract not just for the money, but because we
believe it can make a difference for the children educationally,"
Stephanie S. Lightfoot, the board's vice president, said.

Nevertheless, Arthur A. Brouillet, a school board member who
staunchly opposes the district's relationship with E.A.I., predicted
last week that the company's days in the district were
numbered--especially in light of the fact that most of its supporters
on the board are up for re-election in the fall.

"How can you work with a predatory group looking for profit?" Mr.
Brouillet said.

Competing Budgets

Even the company's supporters have voiced alarm over the apparent
lack of cooperation at the district's top management level:
Superintendent Davis and E.A.I. submitted separate budget plans for the
coming year.

Speaking on behalf of Mayor Peters, Mr. Murchie said: "What this
indicates is that the two parties are not talking to each other
effectively." "This needs to be resolved sooner than later," he
said.

The superintendent's spending plan had been snubbed by a board
majority that felt it offered little in the way of change.

"'Business as usual' is producing a school district in which
students are continuing to slide," said Edward J. Carroll, a board
member who has been supportive of the company.

The E.A.I. budget, on the other hand, called for radical changes
designed to carry out a long-term reform plan the board approved last
summer. It entrusted the fledgling governance teams at the district's
32 schools with far more control over their schools' resources and
education programs, and transferred money from the central
administration to the schools to finance site-based reforms.

The company also indicated that it might cut the district workforce
next year. It predicted shrinkage in student enrollment and asserted
that Hartford spends far more than other districts in the state on
teacher salaries.

Mr. Davis interpreted the company's budget plan as calling for the
elimination of about 300 jobs, most of them teaching positions.
Although the company described this figure as based on an extreme
scenario, the superintendent denounced such workforce reductions as
both likely and unacceptable.

"You build an educational budget based on your curriculum and
program needs. You don't develop a financial plan and tell the school
system to fit into it," Mr. Davis said in an interview last week.

More than 1,000 teachers came to one board meeting and protested the
budget plan so loudly that proceedings were delayed and the board
members called for police protection. At another meeting, all of the
district's principals stood up to express their displeasure with the
company's proposals.

"If there was any evidence that this group does not belong in
Hartford, I think this budget provided it," said George C. Springer,
the president of the Connecticut Federation of Teachers, which has been
working with its Hartford affiliate and the national office of the
American Federation of Teachers in opposing E.A.I. plans to cut the
budget.

Company Scores Unions

John T. Golle, the company's chief executive officer, accused the
unions' leadership of spreading misinformation about the budget.

~"They have brought the system to a point where it can no longer
meet the needs of children, but it does a splendid job of meeting the
needs of adults," he said last week.

Nevertheless, some of the company's most vocal supporters on the
school board also expressed dissatisfaction with E.A.I.'s $171 million
budget plan, arguing that it sought to give the school-governance teams
far more budgetary power than they are ready to handle.

"In this budget, they are essentially recommending a way through
which their expense, and the investments they have made, can be paid,"
Mr. Carroll said. As drafted, the plan would leave schools understaffed
and "result in more problems than it would solve," he said.

Mr. Golle acknowledged last week that the budget plan had called for
radical changes. But, he said, those are what the board had contracted
with his company to introduce. He compared the 23,000-student district
to a cancer patient who, when prescribed chemotherapy, worries
primarily about losing his hair.

Mr. Golle vowed to forge ahead with his efforts to implement the
school board's ambitious reform agenda.

"We were hired to do a most unpleasant task, a task they obviously
could not do alone--or they would have," he said.

The school board plans to approve a revise budget by June 19. It
must approve a budget by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.